In Bosnia, a war was fought between civic nationalism and individual liberty versus ethnic nationalism and collectivism. Bosnia's struggle was, and is, America's struggle.
Dedicated to the struggle of all of Bosnia's peoples--Bosniak, Croat, Serb, and others--to find a common heritage and a common identity.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Four [13]

CHAPTER FOUR: THE MAKING OF EMPIRES

BETWEEN THE VATICAN AND THE COMINTERN

And now to the final section of this chapter. With this post, I can finally say adieu to this incoherent mess of crackpot theories posing as analysis. Apparently, 13 is sometimes a lucky number!

However, before I examine that section, I would like to briefly revisit the previous section, if only to emphasize how ridiculous and tenuous Johnstone's ridiculous conspiracy really is.

Although most of this section focused on the figure of Otto von Hapsburg (who, despite her best efforts, simply fails to live up to the sinister figure she tries to create), in the final few paragraphs she briefly details the placing of other members of the dynasty in Austria, Hungary, and Croatia. I only mentioned this, without documenting exactly how this placement was done. That was probably a mistake on my part--while I was right to dismiss this entire section as hogwash, I do the readers of this blog a disservice by not documenting her lunacy on this particular point. You have plodded through Johnstone's inanities with me, so it is only fair that I share the opportunity to have a laugh at her expense.

Here, then, is her description of one of the three prongs of the sinister Hapsburg plot to regain the throne throughout Mitteleuropa:

"Otto's second son, Georg, took up residence in Budapest in 1993, obtained Hungarian citizenship as Gyorgy, and says he looks forward to representing Hungary in the European Parliament once that country in turn joins the European Union. Meanwhile, the young Hapsburg sits on the board of the National Museum (site of his royal wedding reception) and directs programming for a popular Hungarian radio station."

My God--the horror! He's already got his feet in the door of the National Museum! Can the overthrow of Hungary's nascent democracy be far behind?

The joke is, indeed, on Johnstone. But she's a humorless oaf, clueless about her own desperation. The final paragraph of this section begins with this quote:

"The disintegration of Yugoslavia was encouraging to this hypothetical restoration in a number of ways."

And there you have it--the woman who cautioned against accepting the veracity of first-hand accounts of gang rape has just spent several pages of her book discussing a "hypothetical restoration." Good Lord. I don't know how her brain handles all the intellectual acrobatics necessary to keep this charade of an analysis going.

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So, other than Germans and a "hypothetical restoration" of the Hapsburgs, who else is a member of the vast anti-Serb conspiracy?

Why--the Vatican of course!

Yes, the Catholic Church was the enemy of the Serbs because it didn't like to see the Western Balkans slip from Catholic rule and fall under the dominance of an "Orthodox monarchy." Which, of course, ceased to exist before World War II. But never mind. Johnstone also throws the pre-WW II Soviet opposition to Yugoslavia's existence into the mix, just to spice things up.

Does she update either of these factor to reflect the six decades of Yugoslav history after World War II? Don't be silly. And at any rate, her interest, as always, is not to honestly evaluate her "evidence" but rather to subversively guide the reader towards the predetermined conclusion. Which, as it turns out, leads us back to Germany--the final paragraph briefly touches on the post-WW II period, only to point out that Yugoslavia was "once again" trapped between a hostile Vatican and a hostile (after the break with Stalin) Moscow. Conservative German Catholics, we are assured, were prime movers n the crusade to undermine Yugoslavia's socialist regime. We are assured that:

"The reunification of Germany in the form of a takeover of the Democratic Republic by the Federal Republic marked the victory of this strategy."

"This strategy" being the utilization of a Polish Pope to undermine Communist rule in Eastern Europe. And so, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact turns out to have been nothing but a plot to return the Catholic nations of Eastern Europe to the German sphere of influence. Except for the Catholic parts of Yugoslavia:

"But from the viewpoint of the Catholic German rollback, Yugoslavia was not ahead but behind, a bit of unfinished business."

Not content with rewriting Bosnian, or even Yugoslav, history, our Ms. Johnstone is now rewriting the entire history of the end of the Cold War as crypto-fascist Teutonic/Catholic takeover of East Europe.

And it is on that truly bizarre note that, without any further explanation or clarification, Chapter Four ends.